Small Businesses, Obama, McCain and Detroit

Posted at August 29, 2008

During the past year and a half I regularly called several of the candidates to interview them on a small business web site MySuccessGateway.com and ask them how they would approach small business issues: i.e. minimum wage, taxes, SBA, Federal SBA contracts going to Fortune 500 etc.

I was finally able to land an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, VP candidate of the Libertarian Party. As I listened to Obama deliver his speech last night at the Democratic Convention he talked about small businesses and start up’s and about offering them tax incentives. This is the FIRST time I heard the candidate talk about small businesses since the beginning of the primaries. Same goes with McCain, he is now talking about helping small businesses too. (You would think these "leaders" would concentrate on small business owners throughout the election process since everyone in the USA seems to know a small business owner, there are 25,000,000 of us here in the USA).

Funny how both these guys are finally coming around to recognize that small businesses are the economic engine that run the USA as well as the employment engine. As we come closer to election day we are stuck with the same 2 parties who got us into this mess. I guess we will elect one of the two, and I guess we will be expecting a different result? Right?

If we expect change we will want to bring in the Libertarians and the Green Party to the debates. If we don’t expect more partisanship, fighting, gridlock, corruption, inaction and lousy results. I don’t like being a naysayer but none of these guys are talking about things that really matter i.e. compound interest (oh, sure the war matters but it is only a symptom of a failed energy policy since the Carter era) that will crush future generations.

The one thing that seemed to irk me about Obama’s speech last night was the fact that he seemed sympathetic to Detroit and that it was the government’s fault for their problems. Here is where the problem lies. Detroit has been making junk for the past several decades, so much so that the Japanese have built auto plants in Detroit’s back yard. The unions have sunk Detroit, the management of Detroit automakers aren’t making fuel efficient autos that are not cost effective and they are not moving fast enough to develop green technologies. We all need to stop looking for handouts and get off our asses.